A story from the present day during our lives as cat rescuers.

This is Max whom I found curled up to die in a bush by a restaurant in Kusadasi, Turkey. I took him to the vet and eventually he had to have his eye removed. He has been the victim of unbelievable cruelty. Someone had thrown a rock at him.



He had already been spotted by several more cat people. The story is told by Abigail Mary Johnston.


Two days into our holiday, we were all on our way out one morning when I saw a little kitten with its back to me. Now normally I wouldn't really walk over to it unless I could see mama, but I walked slowly, waited for it to turn around and knelt down to get a look at it.

That's when I got a look at its eye.

I at first assumed it had a really severe case of conjunctivitis and had had it for a while, because this eye looked SO BAD. So, I alerted my friends and the next day, there was the little cutie underneath the same bush, not far from mum.

My friend Sarah reached out and got hold of it and she believed it had a virus that was going around and with her family around, they believed the diagnosis also.
Because we didn't have anything to put the cat in at that time, they applied the medicine that they had on them, directly on this eye and then, put it back with mum for the time being. My friend would later describe the eye as 'Rock hard'.

The next morning, we searched high and low for this kitten. Nowhere to be found. We asked the bar staff and hotel staff to look for it with us and keep an eye out. We kept a cat basket in our room. We also tried playing kitten noises to the mother in hopes she may lead us to her baby.
But no luck. We were all starting to feel a little bit down and obviously, suspected the worse.

On the Third day of looking, we went to a wonderful meeting for 'Paws and Claws' in Kusadasi, a fantastic group for people who help out one another looking after the street cats and dogs.
We were sitting there, during the meeting, calmly discussing whatever we could think of, when suddenly, our friend ran up to us.

The Kitten had been found.

Two days ago.

Turns out, this fantastic guy had been looking for a cat he was after and had stumbled across our little, 'Blinkin' and taken her home. He to had taken care of her when he noticed discharge coming from her eye, which turned out to be her eyeball. She was taken in for an operation and had the eye removed, but was doing very well.

We were so happy to know that at the least, she was going to be ok.
A massive thanks to Greg for finding her and looking after her, you're brilliant at what you're doing!
And 'Blinkin' is now known as Max, which is a much better name!

Welcome to Raining Cats and Dogs - true inspirational stories that will melt and break your heart

This is our original crew. Their mother brought them to our doorstep on our first day here in Turkey. The picture shows them at about six months old (left to right - Whisky, Blackie, Ginger). Not very original names I know but in those days we weren't really cat people.

Little did we know that these three were to change our lives so much. Today we spend most of our time and all of our spare cash on street cat welfare here in Turkey. Below is their lair in some bushes outside our new home near Davutlar when they were just six weeks old (estimated).

As Winter drew in and the holidaymakers left their holiday homes it gradually began to dawn on us that if we didn't take them to our new permanent home in Kusadasi then they would starve. As Europeans one just doesn't come across these dilemmas that often. So we packed them in a cardboard box and took them with us some two months after the above picture was taken. We now know that mum would have abandoned them anyway at around that time. We tried to take mum with us. She didn't like that idea at all. She was probably an abandoned house cat rather than a hardcore street cat and had a bit of class. She would never enter the house unless invited and would wait patiently to be asked in. We now realise Pussy was special. She was a fantastic mum who held her kits down by their shoulders to keep their faces clean and showed them how to climb trees. The memory of leaving her behind to her fate is still painful some three years later.